Monday, September 26, 2005

Is this Heaven? . . . Nevermind.

When I look at Iowa's recent political landscape, I see mostly solid, earnest types who try to do right by their constituents but would hardly capture the imagination of the nation's youth. Maybe that's why I'm pulling for the implausible Coralville rainforest project. If businessman Ted Townsend and his group succeed, it would send the message that just about anything is possible in Iowa.

Okay, let's try it:

Ray, people will come, Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn off I-80 not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at the ticket booth of your 20-story foil-enclosed caterpillar as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the suspended wooden bridges 100 feet in the air; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere in yourIMAX-style theater in a kind of prairie-meets-the-Amazon setting, like the one where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the millions of insects creeping and crawling around in every layer of the rainforest, and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been rainforests. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But rainforests have marked the time. This giant caterpillar, these bugs: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.